If it Weren't for you Meddling Kids!

Children's Games

William Carlos Williams

I

This is a schoolyard

crowded

with children

of all ages near a village

on a small stream

meandering by

where some boys

are swimming

bare-ass

or climbing a tree in leaf

everything

is motion

elder women are looking

after the small

fry

a play wedding a

christening

nearby one leans

hollering

into

an empty hogshead

II

Little girls

whirling their skirts about

until they stand out flat

tops pinwheels

to run in the wind with

or a toy in 3 tiers to spin

with a piece

of twine to make it go

blindman's-buff follow the

leader stilts

high and low tipcat jacks

bowls hanging by the knees

standing on your head

run the gauntlet

a dozen on their backs

feet together kicking

through which a boy must pass

roll the hoop or a

construction

made of bricks

some mason has abandoned

III

The desperate toys

of children

their

imagination equilibrium

and rocks

which are to be

found

everywhere

and games to drag

the other down

blindfold

to make use of

a swinging

weight

with which

 

at random

to bash in the 

heads about

 

them

Brueghel saw it all 

and with his grim

 

humor faithfully 

recorded 

it

I enjoyed this poem, Childrens Games, by William Carlos Williams because it was light hearted but heavy at the same time.  The first two stanzas make it seem like happy innocent child's play, but then the third stanza turns dark and sinister, expressing the possibility of dangerous, hurtful things happening under the guise of innocence.  I also thought this poem was interesting because it reminded me of a couple of Blake's poems that we read earlier in Songs of Innocence and Experience, for example, the Nurse's Song, that is seen in both sections of his book (Innocence and Experience), this seemed like a good comparison to Williams as both he and Blake are exploring the ideas of childhood innocence and the dangers that can be underneath the surface.  In William's poem, the children are the ones with the potential for violence hidden under the guise of play, whereas in the poem by Blake in the Experience section, it seems that it is the adult, the Nurse, who is jealous of the care-free innocence of the children and wants to suppress it.  

I couldn't quite decide what to think or how to feel about Blake, but I really enjoyed Lauren's blog post about this poem, and how it shows the dual nature of love. So for now I will just put this song up and hopefully add more later: 

Paper Bird - Blue Sparks

I wanted to expand my thoughts on Blake and just talk generally about the interesting juxtapositions in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and the way that he utilizes the language of traditional religious iconography to encourage his readers to become active participants in his work as opposed to mere outside viewers.  It seems as if Blake is taking this theme of traditional iconic expression and manipulating it for his own purposes.  He often seems to be utilizing the icon and the traditions it has, as an aid in his critiques of these traditional institutions, manipulating their meaning into messages that explore the darker side of these institutions.  In Songs of Innocence and Experience Blake approaches the world from two different angles, through the lens of the naive, malleable mind of the innocent, and the corrupted, jaded mind of the experienced.  These two opposing forces, often with "sister" poems in each section help to support this theory that Blake is taking the glorified, holy traditions of the iconic ideals, and bringing them down to earth, where it is unavoidably messy.  Blake seems to feel that this traditional icon expression is unrealistic, and he tries to humanize these images by taking them out of their religious context and inserting them in with the human fallicies explored in this set of poems.  This idea that Blake is utlizing is interesting because I think that Blake is a religious person, as he makes many refrences to Christianity in his poetry, but it seems that he is crititquing the institution of his time and perhaps wanting to shed light on what he sees as the foolish notion of perfection and peace that is encouraged through the church.  It is obvious that Blake wants to explore the human condition in its reality and not its ideals.  This is a topic that I would like to do more research on and perhaps expand into an even longer discussion of Blake's style and influences.

Monet's Waterlilies by Robert Hayden

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.

This poem by Robert Hayden, seems to create a safe haven inside Monet's painting.  The art becomes a place to find peace and serenity in an otherwise chaotic, war torn time.  While it creates this space for reflection, it also has a feeling of war.  When I read it again, it almost seems like it is describing a bomb exploding, "the seen, the known / dissolve in iridescence" reminds me of those photographs and video clips of atomic bombs dropping and wiping out everything with a blast of white hot light.

The last stanza then could be the aftermath of the bomb, the silence and gravity that is felt when we realize what it really is we have done and destroyed, things we will never be able to undo, and we must live with the knowing and the consequences.  So the last line, instead of a reassuring reminder that we can still catch glimpses of lost joy, is instead an ironic, bitter statement that forces us to open our eyes to the realities of war, that we sometimes forget in our eagerness to win.

I thought of this song while studying the painting and thinking about the poem, it is Elephant Revival singing their song Cosmic Pulse, which I feel like you can hear in the painting and the text.  The live video I found has another of their songs Ancient Sea beforehand but it seems to fit so I included it in here.

Click here for these 2 awesome songs